Coffee Tasting — How Sleepy Owl used TagTaste for Blind-Panel Tasting of Cold Brew Coffee?
Do these words sound familiar — wine taster, tea taster, and ice cream taster?
Have you ever wondered how thousands of F&B products that are launched in the market every year gets tasted and tested?
What if you want to launch a product of your own but don’t know if you have got its taste, smell, sound, look & feel right?
If these questions ring a bell then you are at the right place. In a series of blogs, we will try to uncover the science behind product tasting, the way to become a professional taster (and earn money) and the tools provided by TagTaste to help you test your own products.
All right then, buckle up. Let the foodie journey begin! :)
Sleepy Owl & Their Quest For Excellence
Sleepy Owl Coffee is a Delhi based cold brew coffee brand founded in 2016 by 3 friends. The founders are focused on redefining the in-home coffee experience, making it convenient and hassle free to enjoy a good cup of coffee. Their beans are A grade, sourced from Chikmagalur, Karnataka.
Their quest for better, unbiased understanding of the sensorial attributes of their product and palette aspirations of their consumer base, brought them to TagTaste and its network of expert panels and consumers.
Conducting a tasting trial seemed to be just the perfect way to do so, and that is how this blog took shape.
The Process
As soon as the modalities were finalised, we created a Collaboration Post on TagTaste with our partner Tasting India to engage experts and consumers on upcoming event.
In order to keep the process free from any bias, the collaboration was created for a blind-panel tasting without disclosing the name of Sleepy Owl Coffee.
Tasting Trials were not fashioned upon the social coffee/wine tasting events; instead they were modelled upon professional tasting sessions and thus called COFFEE CUPPING.
The collaboration received a phenomenal response, around 30 panelists were finalised from the pool of applicants.
The Taster’s Tool Kit was designed; venues were finalised; participants were informed; and the tasting sessions kickstarted.
Taster’s Tool Kit
Our customised TASTER’S TOOL KIT for Cold Brew Coffee consisted of a Coffee Flavour Wheel (below), a Coffee Cupping Manual, and a Coffee Cupping Form.
In terms of attributes of cold brew, the manual identified the attributes, explained importance of ‘slurping’ to release maximum flavour and use of intensity scale, preference scale and terms to objectively measure and express the coffee experience.
D-Day: Blind-Panel Tasting
On the tasting day, TagTaste representatives shared the Coffee Cupping Kit along with the Coffee Cupping Form with all panelists and started the trials.
Activity Snapshot
5 samples — Sleepy Owl (3), Blue Tokai (1), Cha Cha Cha (1)
2 locations — Cha Cha Cha (Delhi) & Red Mango (Gurugram)
Duration — Two and a half hours
Serving glasses — Borosil glasses
Palette cleansers — Drinking water (hot/room temperature) & rusks
TagTaste taster’s tool kit — More on this in upcoming blogs
Outcome
10 calendar days is what it took for Sleepy Owl to use TagTaste platform and get an authentic, structured feedback from real experts & consumers in the market. It helped them to prove their hypothesis and gave enough food for thought for future product launches.
The results cannot be shared on the platform as they are covered by tacit confidentiality agreement between TagTaste and Sleepy Owl; but we will soon be back with the sample report card on such trials.
Our Perspective
Being entrepreneurs, we understand the value that such inputs can create for companies with regard to the development of their new products. We are working hard to make it easier for companies to conduct such tasting trials and for the budding tasters to get better in their jobs.
So far, we have conducted around 30 structured and unstructured tasting sessions with a total of over 2000 tasters put together. In our future blogs, we will dig deeper into the world of product reviews and related activities. So, stay tuned!
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